The Playlist

Having raised the temperature a few degrees with a tease of a nefarious Benedict Cumberbatch and some pretty thrilling trailers, details are starting emerge about what to expect from the long under-wraps storyline of J.J. Abrams' hotly anticipated space epic “Star Trek: Into Darkness,” and a new clip that just premiered is almost exclusively centered around Cumberbatch's mysterious villain John Harrison.

The spy genre, is generally speaking, a euphemism for 'action movie' -- look at the explosions, fistfights and car chases of the Bond films, of the 'Mission: Impossible' series, of the 'Bourne' franchise, none of which have much in the way of actual tradecraft. The business of being a spy is hard, boring work, made up of listening and talking and without a lot of glamor. One of the men who best understands this is novelist John Le Carré, himself a former spy, who for close to half a century has been behind some of the most acclaimed literary examples of the genre. But aside from the much-loved "The Spy Who Came In From the Cold," and the more recent "The Constant Gardener" (the latter not strictly speaking an espionage picture), his works haven't had a huge amount of success on the big screen, lacking the speedboats and fireballs of Ian Fleming or Robert Ludlum. One of the writer's best-known books is "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy," the first of the 'Karla' trilogy, which focuses on George Smiley, a middle-aged veteran of 'The Circus' (Le Carré's term for the British intelligence services) and his rivalry with his Soviet counterpart Karla. Working Title Films has spent the last couple of years on a new cinematic take with Tomas Alfredson, director of the much-acclaimed "Let the Right One In," making his English-language debut at the helm. It's no small undertaking, considering that the novel was previously adapted as a much-loved, seven-part, 290-minute BBC miniseries, headed up by an indelible performance from the great Alec Guinness. Alfredson might have assembled an all-star cast of British talent to bring the book to life, but could the company, led by Gary Oldman taking up Smiley's thick glasses, hope to match their predecessors? And could the film manage to keep the plot coherent and thrilling at a running time less than half of what the TV take had to play with?

Wow. Maybe it's just the way our brains are wired, but we just saw more fireworks from 70-odd seconds of middle-aged British character actors than we got across two-and-a-half-hours of empty spectacle in "Transformers: Dark of the Moon." The Guardian just debuted the first international teaser trailer for one of our most anticipated films of the rest of the year, Working Title's adaptation of John Le Carre's spy classic "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy," the English-language debut of "Let The Right One In" director Tomas Alfredson, and it's easily one of the best trailers we've seen in an age.

Benedict Cumberbatch Out, Choosing To Do Brit WWI-era Mini-seriesIt's been a while since we've heard anything on Joe Wright's "Anna Karenina" -- mostly because the press rounds for "Hanna" have ended -- but today comes a fresh bit of casting news about the film. But before we get to that, let's just re-cap for a second shall we? Last fall, came first word that Keira Knightley would re-team with her "Atonement" and "Pride & Prejudice" director for the film. Then, this spring, Jude Law and Aaron Johnson came aboard with Joe Wright later saying that Kelly Macdonald and Benedict Cumberbatch had joined the film, and that he was waiting on Saoirse Ronan and James McAvoy to confirm.